


To Gloss Over Details

by paradiamond



Category: A Cure For Wellness (2016)
Genre: Erectile Dysfunction, F/M, Lockhart POV, No penetration, Sexual exploration, kind of a mess, past sexual abuse (canon), post escape, sexual disfunction on Lockhart's part, some disordered eating, stress does that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-23 14:14:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11991513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paradiamond/pseuds/paradiamond
Summary: They're in the real world, as much as he's willing to let them be, and living everything that comes with it.





	To Gloss Over Details

**Author's Note:**

> this is two individual's faults and yall know who you are

The train rattled on the rails, old in a way that would have made Lockhart nervous under normal circumstances. But now, he wondered if it would just feel right, if they were to fly off into the mountains. Just the end of their story. 

He shifted in his seat and looked away, back to Hannah, who was plastered up against the window, peering out with wide eyes. The landscape hadn’t stopped being fascinating to her, and he found himself hoping that it never would. 

“Do you think we’ll fall?” Hannah asked suddenly, and it almost made him jump with how similar their thoughts had been. 

Lockhart glanced out the window again, to the almost sheer drop. “Probably not.” 

“But maybe.” 

“There’s always a maybe.” 

Hannah nodded seriously, still staring. “I didn’t ask you where we were going.” 

He suppressed a smile. “Yeah, I noticed that. You seemed pretty distracted at the station.” 

“Pretty,” she said, turning her head to follow something as it went by. “But where? Your home?” 

He shifted in his seat, an old familiar fear crawling up his spine, turning over his stomach. The last thing he wanted was to spend another hour in the train toilet, puking his guts up. So he kept his head down, away from the rushing outside and his hands gripping his knees tight. Grounded. 

“Yeah, or no, I mean. I'm uh- from a different place.” 

“America,” she responded, promptly. 

Lockhart glanced up. “Yeah.” 

“Most of them are from there, or Britain,” she explained, fingers tracing the glass in small circles. 

“I guess that makes sense.” 

Hannah looked over to him and shifted forward in her seat, and not, he noticed with a smirk, sitting like a lady. “Are we going there? What's it like?”

Lockhart dropped the smile. “It's supposed to be the greatest country on earth.”

Her eyes widened. “Is it?”

Lockhart blinked. “I mean, I kind of doubt it.”

Hannah pursed her lips, visibly disappointed. He wanted to reach out and touch her. She was still so much like a child sometimes, too cut off from the rest of the world. 

Lockhart looked out the window instead, ignoring the fear. 

Hannah’s hand landed on his, startling him. “It's ok.”

“Uh-”

“We’ll find something better. Yes?” she prompted him, the age in her eyes showing, all of sudden wise. 

He squeezed her hand, keeping it for himself. “Yes.”

*** 

Their room is small, more of a B&B than a proper hotel. The keeper had curled his lip at the sight of them but taken their money anyway, which was good enough. 

They were both filthy, both a complete mess. Hannah followed Lockhart everywhere he went, always in his shadow, even into the bathroom. He looked away when she got in the tub, stayed on the other side of the little room, on the floor, and tried not to look, too afraid of seeing a mass of writhing eels. Or worse, feeling them. 

But it was too late. Even the thought of it turned over his stomach, and he lurched for the toilet, throwing up again, bile clawing up his throat. He coughed, terrified of looking down, of seeing anything worse, but there hadn’t been eels, or the remnants of eels, since the forest, since the first night. He shuddered and rested his head against the rim, shaking until Hannah laid her hand on his back. 

Lockhart turned his head, still disgusting, still sick, and saw her leaning out of the water, her face serene, accepting. Like an angel. Naked, her small breasts fully on display, and completely unselfconscious. It didn’t feel strange to look now. He doubted he’d ever been in a less sexually charged situation in his life. It just seemed close, intimate. Her hand rubbed at his back, rhythmically, like he was a baby. 

He threw up again. 

“There,” she said, very quietly. “Good.” 

Lockhart moaned into the toilet, forgetting to even be embarrassed as she got out and helped him up and out of his own clothes. She guided him into the bath, which was not full of eels but her dirty water, only sort of warm and not completely clear anymore. He grabbed her wrist when she went to unstop the tub. 

“Just leave it,” he croaked, voice rough once again. It was becoming his default state. 

She blinked and he noticed that she had put on his clothes, the shirt tied to keep it out of the way and the pants gaping at the waist. He reached out to touch without thinking, then froze. “I-” 

Hannah took his hand, lacing their fingers together. Then her eyes dropped. “Can I look?”

Lockhart cracked a smile. “You already are.” 

“I think permission matters.” 

“Yeah,” he said, shifting his weight, self conscious but not about to send her away. “That’s true.” 

“You didn’t look at me when I got in.” 

He considered and then dismissed the idea of telling her his nightmare. “I wanted to be polite, I guess. Like you said.” 

Hannah hummed. “Can I touch?” 

Lockhart blinked. “I guess.” 

“Can I touch if you don’t?” 

“Sure.” 

She nodded and reached down, making his heart jump in his chest, part fear and part thrill. With him spread out and her fully clothed, pants now, always pants, she explored him. It was mostly innocent, her touching only what she could easily reach while sitting on the rim of the tub. Lockhart leaned back and kept his eyes closed, his hands holding the side of the tub. He was so nervous about getting an erection and scaring her, of repulsing her, that he didn’t get one at all. 

***

They were far away from it now, probably out of reach. Still, Lockhart wedged a chair under the door to their room as soon as they were inside and saw Hannah nod approvingly. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, starting to get a little long, a little unprofessional. Not that it mattered. He let it drop, ignoring the way it got in his eyes a bit, and dragged himself over to sit next to Hannah on the bed, dead tired. 

It was the only bed in the room, which was the cheapest option. Hannah hadn’t blinked, completely unconcerned. Lockhart hadn’t cared either. Normally, it would mean something, some kind of signal. But they had spent their first night together outside, under the biggest tree they could find, Lockhart vomiting up the entire contents of his stomach while Hannah bled through her dress, so he figured they were beyond that kind of shyness now. 

True to form, Hannah scooted close, shoulder to thigh with him. “It’s cold.” 

Lockhart hummed, picking at his fingers. His lips were dry, again. He licked at them, probably only making it worse. 

“Lockhart?”

“Yeah?”

She was quiet, which was strange, and so he looked up to see her staring back at him, a deep well of fear building in her eyes. He panicked, and grabbed at her shoulder. “What?” 

Hannah didn’t blink. “When...back at the castle.”

Lockhart went very still. “Yeah?”

“Doctor- my father, he- when he…” she trailed off, looking at him with wide eyes, like he knew what to do, which he really didn’t. “He put his fingers...inside me?”

It was like a question, like she was asking him why he would ever do that. Lockhart didn’t know. He looked away, still holding onto her, tighter and tighter. 

He needed to say something, and that wasn’t even what she really needed. She needed a fucking therapist, but who? No one would believe her, obviously. And she just didn’t understand that either. When they were getting tickets for the train someone asked where they were coming from and she started _telling_ them. 

“Ok, look.” He let go and shifted forward, elbows on his knees, and she mirrored him, expression serious. “I don't know what was wrong with doctor- with your father. But whatever it was, it wasn't your fault and it's not your problem, yeah?”

She frowned.

“Tell me,” he insisted. “Not your fault.”

“Not my fault,” she repeated, dutifully. 

“Ok.” He laid back, collapsing against the bed, terrified and tired and still sick. 

Jesus Christ, he thought, and stared up at the ceiling as Hannah curled in next to him, her hand fisted in his shirt. He just did Good Will Hunting. 

He was so distracted, and so tired from all the running and not eating and no water that he almost didn’t notice it when Hannah shifted up, pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth. But it was already dark, and he was so tired that he dropped straight into sleep. 

***

Outside wasn’t safe so much as it was comforting. The tree had protected them, the river had guided them back to town. It felt like they were ok, like they could get away, even if they couldn’t. So Lockhart got a tent. 

Really, he stole a tent. His money had run out the third night of the hotel and he barely noticed until the stern faced manager had banged on their door. No english either, so they had communicated in a mix of hand gestures and ineffective yelling while Hannah watched from the other side of the room, wide eyed and openly fascinated. 

“Ok so,” Lockhart dropped the tent on the ground, kicking it open. “I used to be a boy scout, so I kind of know what I’m doing here.” 

Hannah nodded, even though he could tell that she had no idea what he was talking about. While he set about getting the tent standing, she wandered around, gathering wood, pulling up what looked like weeds to him, and occasionally drifting close to touch. Every time she did, a shiver ran up his spine. Fingers on the underside of his jaw, barely there, the flat of her hand up his back, over his shirt. Exploring. He stayed facing front and let her, not thinking about it, not thinking about anything at all. She took it all away. 

Later, they laid together in the tent, Hannah at his back, her arms wrapped around him. 

“How’d you know to make that stuff?” he asked, referring to their strange dinner. She had boiled the weeds in water, making the liquid slightly cloudy. Lockhart had watched intently, making sure to see every ingredient, every drop of water. Nothing survived being boiled like that. 

“Books,” she said simply. 

He smirked. “I guess you had a lot of time for that.” 

“Yes.” 

Lockhart picked at his fingers and finally decided to say what he needed to say. “Listen, I’m not like...a good person.” 

She smiled against the back of his neck. “Are you sure?”

It startled a laugh out of him. “Uh, I mean-”

“Good people do good things. You did a good thing.”

“One good thing, yeah. But it’s- people are different out there. It’s a different kind of world.” 

She pulled at his shoulder, turning him, putting him on his back. A line appeared between her eyebrows. “You’re going to be different? How?”

Lockhart frowned. “I- I won’t be. Not to you, if we ever get there” he said, deciding it at the same time. 

He would be her knight in shining armor for the rest of her life if she wanted, it was the only time he’d ever felt right. 

Ok,” she said, a little unsure. But then she brightened up some when he took her hand, so he kept holding it, determined to keep it up all the way through the night. 

Her other hand moved, restless, exploring again. Lockhart breathed evenly and let her, shifting to give her access where she wanted it, but otherwise keeping still. It didn’t occur to him to touch her back, not then, not after what happened. 

Hannah drew her hand down from the ball of his shoulder to the inside of his thigh and then back up. She slipped her hand into the collar of his shirt, and he sat up so she could pull it off him. The plastic of the tent felt strange on his skin, and he found himself thinking about sleeping bags and bottled water as she opened his pants. 

He shifted his hips up for that too, letting her strip him down to nothing. He could feel her eyes on him in the dark, setting off a heat in his chest, an electricity in his bones. Her fingers traced over his dick, curious as a cat, but he felt no physical response to it, like that part of him had been deadened, left back at the fire. 

He stayed limp, his hand still clenched in hers and his legs spread. He didn’t get hard, not even when she leaned down to kiss his hip bone, her hair brushing his inner thighs, inhuman, like ghost touches, like eels. Lockhart let his eyes slip shut, cutting off his view of her outline, terrifying in the dark. 

What’s wrong with me? 

***

The next morning, they were just laying around, half awake and half still asleep, mostly naked. It wasn’t like they had anywhere to be, and he still felt pain all the way up his spine most days. Hannah sighed, and then suddenly sat bolt right up. “Lockhart!”

He scrambled, fear clawing at his throat, a thousand possibilities- 

“We forgot the ballerina!” Hannah cried, her face the picture of dismay. 

He fell back down and laughed. “I don’t understand how you can be so...you. After all that? It’s amazing.”

She cocked her head to the side. “What do you mean?”

“I just-” he shook his head, and noticed his hands are shaking at the same time. “You’re really ressoliant. It’s impressive.”

“Well of course.”

He turned to look at her and saw that she’d slid back down to lie beside him, her face parallel to his. He wanted to kiss her. He turned his face away instead, breathing out through his nose. 

“How? It was so…” He couldn’t even finish. They hadn’t discussed it. Ever. 

“Simple. We got out.” 

Lockhart glanced back over at her and stayed, just watching. Hannah watched him right back, a sort of calculation in her eyes. She was more and more growing up, it seemed, apparently had some catching up to do, physically and otherwise. He didn’t know what to do. 

Suddenly, she rolled, putting herself on top of him. Lockhart startled, his hands flying up to grip at her waist, but didn’t try to push her off. “Uh-” 

“It’s alright,” Hannah said, quietly. “You don’t have to do anything.” 

Lockhart physically relaxed himself, old lessons coming back easily under her barely there weight. It wasn’t like being trapped, not like being stuck in the iron lung. So much easier than that. 

“Whatever you want,” he said, quietly, and she smiled down at him, an angel again. Her hair fell over her shoulders, dirty but beautiful, a wave on either side. 

“I’ll kiss you.” 

“Ok.” 

“You don’t have to kiss me back.” 

“Ok, I probably will but-” 

She leaned down sealed her lips over his, not breathing, not moving. Lockhart tilted his head up and to the side, lining them up better, and waited. Her hands moved over his chest, confidant in a way her mouth was not. She pulled back, just a bit, and braced her elbows on either side of his head, her legs bracketing his hips. 

“Nothing happened,” she said, frowning. 

Lockhart grinned. “You have to make it happen.” 

Her barely there eyebrows quirked up, and some of the old familiar uncertainty crept back into her expression. “I-” 

“Here,” he said, and slid a hand behind her neck, pulling down gently, enough that she could break away. She didn’t, following him down as he turned his face so that their noses didn’t bump together. Lockhart moved his lips over hers gently, shifting and sliding. He tipped his head down and brought them just out of alignment, his lips on her bottom one, pulling slightly, letting up. 

She leaned away. “Huh.” 

“Yeah.” 

They fell back asleep, just like that. 

***

Kissing became normal. Fishing became a challenge. The outside world became a memory. 

Hannah didn’t ask about it again, apparently not in a hurry to get anywhere. Probably the result of having literally unlimited time for her entire life, Lockhart thought, watching her make the weed soup again. Both of them were rail thin, they needed protein or they would probably die. Hence the fishing. 

But the water was dark, even when the sun was out, and he could only stand near it for so long before his bones got weak and his legs started to shake from the fear of what might be underneath it. He was almost protein for something monstrous, and would have been if Hannah hadn’t saved him. If he hadn’t saved her. If she hadn’t-

“Lockhart?” 

He turned and saw her staring at him from what looked like weirdly far away. Water at his legs, crawling up the fabric of his pants. He looked down, and screamed, scrambling for the edge, hurling himself back up to land as Hannah ran to him, eyes wide and frightened. 

“It’s alright!” 

“No,” he sputtered, pulling his pants off. “No, no way.” 

He collapsed on the bank as Hannah petted his hair, glaring at the water. The fishing pole was gone. “I think we’re going to have to go back.” 

Hannah kept touching him. His nose, his neck, his shoulder blade. He turned in her arms, still sitting on the ground without pants like a fucking idiot. “Did you hear me?” 

“Of course.” 

“I’m not a boy scout anymore.” 

“No. I’m not a little girl.” 

He laughed, trying not to look at the water at all now. He looked at her instead. “No.” 

“Let’s eat and then sleep, yes? We can talk about the outside tomorrow.” 

Lockhart nodded and let her pull him up. But when they got there, the pot was sitting there alone, and he realized that she had run to him, that she hadn’t been watching it the whole time. He stared at it, heart picking up, so that he can hear it, hear his own blood. 

Anything could have happened to it while she was with him, not looking, not protecting it. 

Hunger clawed at his bones as she poured it into their one bowl. They always took turns. She drank, he drank. He pressed his lips together, breathing through his nose. When she lowered the bowl, she looked at him, waiting for him to raise his hand. He didn’t. Hannah blinked, and raised to bowl again, drinking. 

Something in Lockhart’s stomach clenched, painful. Starving. They were starving. 

Hannah drank half of the soup as he watched, then poured another bowl. Lockhart unhinged his jaw, painful as it was. “You can have the rest.” 

She shook her head. “Are we leaving today?” 

“No.” 

“Then no.” 

He breathed out, then in. Outside helped, but not that much. They stared at each other for a long time. The birds stopped. Even the sun got bored of it. 

“Fine.” Lockhart raised his hand, but Hannah brought the bowl straight to his mouth, waiting out his initial instinct it snap it shut. 

He drank the soup, cold and plain, on his knees in a stupid forest. Hannah fed it to him in sips, intently focused. She’d never lived in a world full of distractions, wasn't susceptible to so much that he still was. No jitters, no fear of missing out, no place to be. 

He only choked once, the soup coming up and onto his shirt in a cough. But Hannah didn’t flinch. They waited, frozen in place, the temperature dropping, and then started again. 

***

“So,” Hannah trailed her hand along a wood paneled space, looking intently around at the room. “Real world?” 

Lockhart looked up from the forms he’d been pouring over. “Sort of. Switzerland kind of made itself into its own world after the war.” 

Hannah made a face. “Good.” 

“Yeah. The really good thing is that extradition between here and the U.S. is basically-” 

A knock rang out in the room, startling both of them. Lockhart swallowed it down and stood. “Yes?” 

A kind faced woman poked her head inside. “Everything alright?” 

“Yes, thank you,” Lockhart answered, carefully suspicious of that kind of politeness. He reminded himself, not for the first time, why there were there. What it was worth. 

The woman nodded and shut the door. Hannah glared at it, and then got up to go make sure it was still unlocked, that they hadn’t been trapped inside. It was. 

“I don’t like them.” 

“Me either,” Lockhart said, sitting back down and signing his name. “But we’re the best witnesses they have, so it’s in their interest to take care of us.” 

“They?” 

“The government. The Canton that the Center was-” 

“Why?” 

Lockhart looked up and blinked at her. She stared back, her mouth set in a frown, the line between her eyebrows back again. He nodded. “They seem sick?”

Hannah nodded back. “They are. I can...feel it.”

“We just have to get through it enough so that we can live on our own. They’ll give us money once we’re done, especially if we do interviews.” 

“Why?” 

Lockhart shrugged. “They’re sick, like you said. They want to know all the details but they don’t want to feel it. So we feel it for them and they pay us.” 

“Then we go away.”

“Right. Back outside, except with like, food and hopefully a place to sleep with a real roof.” 

Her shoulders came down, somewhat. “Ok.” 

Smirking, he held out his arms, forms forgotten, and she came to him. “I know these kind of people. I can do this part.” 

“I believe you,” Hannah said, and crawled straight into his lap. “I just don’t want you to get sick too.” 

Her scent came over him like a blanket, and he buried his hands in her hair, pulling it out, over and over. “I won’t, not as long as you stay with me.” 

That pleased her, and she melted in his arms, boneless, slumped against him like dead weight. Lockhart smirked and kept touching her, curling her hair in his fingers, pulling it through, clean for once. She passed out, her chin digging into his collarbone. 

Lockhart stayed still, glaring at anyone who dared try to pass through, even as the room grew dark. She woke up with a jolt hours later, when his muscles were screaming to move, gasping against his neck. 

A nightmare. A recent thing, that started when they left the woods. He tightened his arms around her. 

“Outside?” 

She nodded, her face mashed up against his neck, her teeth and lips pressed there, moving, sometimes kissing, mostly just pressing. 

“Put your arms around my neck,” he instructed, and she did it without question, sending a thrill up his spine that turns into a warmth. Determined, he hooked his hands under her butt and hoisted himself up and out of the chair, almost falling down at once. Hannah didn’t move, would have fallen right with him and stayed down. 

After a long moment of careful nothing, he moved through the room slowly, not quite back to his full strength. But Hannah looked better already, some fullness finally in her face, some padding over her bones under his hands. He held her tighter, leaning back awkwardly, and moved them. 

“Can you open the door?” he asked, turning around so that she was facing it, and heard the click of the handle. He turned back, and stepped through the opening. 

For obvious reason, they steered clear of all the pool signs, heading instead for the back door. The night attendant avoided his eyes as he passed, probably still a bit shook up from when she asked him if they wanted to go swimming and he laughed in her face so much and so hard that she left the room. Lockhart had felt bad, but not enough to go after her. 

“I guess that wasn’t very nice,” he had said afterward, curled up with Hannah near the fire. 

Hannah had just shrugged. “You’re not nice.” 

The made him laugh again, and not like he was dying. 

Lockhart pushed the glass back door open with his shoulder, looking around at the garden, like a slice of nature in the middle of the world. Like central park, but smaller and walled in. Safer. Geneva was a huge city, sprawling and anonymous. He stopped, listening, and then kept going, confidant. 

Most of the time, they weren’t anywhere near water, steering clear of the rivers the city was built around. Hannah still boiled everything they drank, and cut their food up into tiny pieces under the fascinated gazes of their hosts. Lockhart didn’t pay them any mind, utterly freed from the court of public opinion. Nothing mattered anymore except for the things that did. 

It was an uncomfortable truth, and one he doubted he’d share with the media, that even after everything, he had been cured of what really made him ill after all. 

Hannah didn’t move until he had them under the big tree. Then she picked her head up, peering around like an animal introduced to a new habitat. Lockhart smiled and leaned back against it, not about to put her down until she wanted to go. “Hey.” 

“Hello.” 

The bark felt good at his back, the wind kind on his face. Hannah’s hair near his nose, her skin on his skin. 

“Ok,” Hannah said, and unhooked her legs from around his waist, her bare feet hitting the ground with just the lightest sound. Lockhart let her go, but she stayed close, her hands still bunched in his shirt. She pulled, and he followed, sitting down on the grass, the tree still at his back. He didn’t bother asking what she dreamed. 

“We’re going to have this all the time,” Hannah said.

“I know.” 

Satisfied, she nodded, then pulled him forward. It was familiar, comfortable even, to open his mouth against hers, to let her take from him what she wanted. Lockhart settled his hands at her waist and she touched and scratched at his face, his hair, her mouth working over his, her tongue against his bottom lip. She rocked her hips, towards him but not touching, as usual, the pattern established. 

Then she broke it. 

“Uh-” Lockhart blinked at her as she pulled him down, on top of her in the grass, her hair spread out behind her. 

“Touch me.” 

Watching her intently for anything, everything, he settled down on top of her, in between her legs instead of next to her. She didn’t flinch, and kissed him again, her arms holding him in by the shoulders. Lockhart kissed her back, then pulled away to press his lips to her neck, drawing them from the juncture of her shoulder to the base of her jaw, and she shivered, bracing her feet against the ground to push her hips up and into his. 

“Hannah,” he muttered, into her neck, and she nodded, and did it again. 

He felt something stir in the back of his mind, right behind his hips, but that was all. Nothing else slotted into place, not the way it should. He had thought, or at least lied to himself, that once he decided it should happen, it would. But nothing did. 

Abruptly panicked, he ground down against her, making her cry out sharply and clutch at his back, her nails catching at him through his shirt. Still, nothing. Determined, he did it again, and again, rutting against her as she whined and pushed back, chasing him, her eyes closed. 

“I- more, Lockhart.” 

She might as well have slapped him for all the good it did. Perversely, he stopped, and looked down at her glazed over expression. “I don’t- I don’t know if I can.” 

“What? Just do.” 

“No I mean-” He looked away, over near the house. “I can’t do it right.” 

“I don’t care about right,” Hannah said, quietly, still rolling her hips in little circles against him, to no effect. 

Lockhart stared down at her, caught between getting mad and just giving in. It wasn’t like she knew any better, even knew what it was supposed to be, but that was worse, like he had stolen something from her. “Even if it’s not...correct? I can still make you feel-” 

She nodded, her head bobbing up and down in the grass, probably getting filthy again. His mouth was dry. And he wanted her anyway. 

“Ok,” he said, and she smiled. “Ok.” 

Hannah spread herself out like a starfish and it made him smile. He shifted off of her to slide his leg in between hers, one slotted after the other, and told her to move against it. Hannah obeyed immediately, grinding up against his leg and moaning with such a lack of shame that it made him blush. He pushed her shirt up and touched her breasts, drew his mouth along her collar bones, and slid his hand down and under the elastic of her pants. 

She grabbed his hand in a flash, so fast he didn’t even see it until her fingers were wrapped around his wrist, a handcuff. 

He blinked, shocked, then he remembered. “Sorry. Wasn’t thinking.” 

“It’s…” she trailed off, not looking at him. Above, the trees rustled in the wind. Birds chirped. And somewhere, out there, people were out to get them. 

“No, really. I won’t do that. We don’t have to do anything like that, ever,” he promised, desperate that she won’t turn away from him. 

Hannah made a face, her eyebrows drawn in, her mouth set in a hard line. “I want to.” 

Lockhart stayed still, heart pounding, until she let him go. But her face was still too still, and her spine was rigid under his hands when he put them back where they were safe. Awful, terrifying. It made him feel cold. He tried to pull away, but she pulled him back, against her half rucked up shirt, her arms wrapped around his head. Breathing tightly against her skin, he wondered, and worried, and decided to try. 

“Ok, let me up,” he said, very quietly, and she did, worry etched into her face. “If you can take your pants off, I’m going to...I won’t touch you with my hands, yeah? I’ll kiss you.” 

She nodded, but stayed quiet as she shimmied out of the pants, and the shirt for good measure. Lockhart looked down at her, her body completely familiar, and then pulled away to get naked too, skinny and somehow still not hard and she didn’t care. He stuffed his shirt under her hips and then settled down between her legs again, this time with her feet next to his stomach and his face at the juncture of her thigh, his hands hooked under her knees. 

“Is this ok?” Lockhart kissed her right at that crease, and felt her shake. 

“Yes,” she breathed, and then reached down with both palms up and open. Lockhart blinked, and then let her go, slid his hands into hers to hold for safe keeping, his arms pinning her legs open still. It would have been weird, before. Anyone stumbling upon them would scream, probably, and then maybe laugh. But they were alone, it was dark. Other people didn’t matter. 

Lockhart had done this before with other girls, had taken a pride in it. There was nothing quite like making a pretty girl fall apart, watching her go tight, making her say his name before he slid inside her. He always felt filthy, in a skin crawling way, taboo. He rarely knew their names. This was somehow the mirror opposite to those times, despite the fact that it was by far the weirdest, most public, and best sex of his life. 

Hannah cried out when he slid his tongue against her, already sensitive. Also very wet, which he had felt against his leg, and before, earlier, when they weren’t doing this at all, only kissing. He should have wanted to wipe his face, but he didn’t. It made it easy, so simple a thing to make her feel good. 

He sealed his lips over her and sucked, just gently. Still, she cried out like he had bitten her, like he had worked her over for hours and she was getting over sensitized. The muscles of her thighs bunched under his upper arms, wound tight and ready to snap. Normally, he would hitch them wider, rub circles into them with his fingers, but he couldn’t because he promised. 

No hands, no touching. Only his mouth, his nose, his tongue. It was a bad angle, he could barely get down at all, so he focused on her clit, and had to wonder if she had ever touched herself at all from the way she moved against him, already caught up. Probably not. Still, he was the one that shook the most, dizzy with it. 

He thought, maybe, that he would get hard while he was going down on her. That it would unlock something inside of him, some kind of sense memory. He didn’t, but it was fine with her pushing back against him, her legs a pressure on his arms, her hips moving under his mouth, like a fire. 

He felt it when she started to come, her gasps coming quicker together, the muscles of her stomach shaking, probably knew it before she did. Lockhart kept the same speed but upped the intensity, not stopping when she cried out, not stopping when her back bowed. Not stopping until she asked. 

“Please, it’s-” Hannah gasped and shuddered as he licked her again, gently. “It’s so much.” 

Lockhart raised his head, looking up at her splayed out in the grass. “Should I stop?” 

“Yes,” she whispered. “I want to kiss you.” 

The whole time, she held his hands, keeping them to herself even as he raised himself back up to settled against her. They stayed between them, fingers laced together, pressed chest to chest. 

Hannah kissed him, then froze before moving again, licking his mouth. Lockhart moaned and let her, let her explore, have everything of him. He panted like he’d run a marathon even though nothing, nothing had happened to him. 

“Good?” Hannah asked, her voice low. It seemed appropriate for the space. He could hear birds but also cars, people were probably close. 

He pressed down, his face at her shoulder, probably crushing her, possibly sexually dysfunctional for life, definitely naked at the back of a public garden. It didn’t matter. 

“Yeah, good.” 

He felt her smile against his skin, and let himself fall asleep. Not safe, not really. But enough.


End file.
